
Book ZIE2L3 



Missions and World Movements 



Missions 

and 

World Movements 

By 

Bishop Charles H. Fowler 

II 

An address delivered before the 
Eastern Missionary Con- 
vention of the Methodist Epis- 
copal Church, Philadelphia, 
Pa., October 13-15, 1903 






NEW YORK: EATON & MAINS 
CINCINNATI: JENNINGS & PYE 



\-iiRESS 
Tw* Copies Received 

FEB 8 i904 

l Copyright Entry 

^©i^. . ; -«f - / 1 o * 
CLASS 2- XXcNo, 

7 1 & 1 °{ 
' COPY 6 I 



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The Philadelphia Convention Addresses are pub- 
lished in a series of seven small volumes, of 
which this is one. The volumes are entitled : 

A CALL TO ADVANCE 

MISSIONS AND WORLD MOVEMENTS 

THE ASIATIC FIELDS 

THE AFRICAN, EUROPEAN, AND 
LATIN AMERICAN FIELDS 

GENERAL SURVEY AND HOME FIELDS 

YOUNG PEOPLE AND MISSIONS 

THE MISSIONARY WORKSHOP 



Copyright, 1903, by 
Jennings & Pye 



Copyright, 1904, by 
Eaton & Mains 



Missions and World 
Movements. 



* 



Missions and World Movements fully 
stated would answer the whys of human 
history ; why it runs thus and thus. Mount 
Calvary is the key that unlocks the mystery. 
Redemption is God's objective point. What- 
ever God says goes in a Missionary Conven- 
tion ; goes finally in human history. I have 
seen throngs of Hindus bathing at the junc- 
tion of the Ganges and the Jumna. They 
believed that at the junction of these two 
sacred rivers there was also a third, a holy 
and invisible river coming down from the 
throne of God that, mingling with the two 
earthly rivers, cleansed the bathers and made 
them fit for the kingdom of God. So we 
5 



Missions and World Movements. 

hold that where the great streams of secular 
events and of Church movements mingle, 
there is also another stream coming down 
from God's Almighty Providence that trans- 
forms these streams and orders their move- 
ments in the interest of the kingdom of God. 
This stream of Providence comes to the sur- 
face in the history of Israel, but it sweeps 
on under all history. Cyrus took Babylon 
from polytheists, idolaters, and extended the 
domains of Monotheism. Mohammed 
trampled down idolatrous altars. The 
bloody Eagles of Rome quieted and com- 
pacted the clashing tribes, and lifted a wide 
shield that protected St. Paul everywhere 
from the malice and bigotry of his country- 
men. German and English monarchs turned 
back the power of the pope, and made room 
for religious freedom. Wesley touched the 
dead corpse of formal Christianity; it felt 
the throb of new life, and stood upon its feet. 



Missions and World Movements. 

The Trend of the Ages is Godward. 

Latest evolutionists hold that natural se- 
lection is under this law. There has always 
been one end in view up through all animal 
increments to the perfected physical, up into 
the intellectual, and up, by the same law of 
selection, to the spiritual. From the first 
speck of mist in the universe on through 
the inconceivable lapses of duration there 
has been a steady trend toward the perfect 
man. This ideal of evolution Christianity 
has realized in the man of Nazareth. There 
is that in things that makes for righteous- 
ness. My faith does not faint or weary in 
this long ascent. This only gives me a good 
start into an endless future.. The Supreme 
Power who has worked and watched so long 
will not now sleep nor forget me. 

On the way to the North Cape our 
steamer brushed against the branches of 
trees on the sides of the mountains that rose 
7 



Missions and World Movements. 

almost straight up out of the sea. I won- 
dered how it could be safe to sail so close. 
But marine engineers said to me: "It is 
safe. The shape and slant of the land above 
water indicates the shape and slant of the 
land below." So the unnumbered ages of 
God's thought in the past assures me of care 
for endless ages to come. When God tires 
out it will be so late, that the universe will 
have been rolled together like a scroll and 
folded away like a vesture, and we shall 
have grown so old and strong on the wide 
fields of our eternal activity that we can 
only dimly recall the little kindergarten 
patch of this world's missions. With Jesus 
here in our humanity, we see what is pos- 
sible. We can poorly realize what we shall 
be; but this we know, we shall be trans- 
formed into His likeness, our vile bodies 
shall be fashioned like unto his glorious 
body, and we shall be like him, for we shall 
see him as he is. God seeks always with all 
8 



Missions and World Movements. 

power and with all wisdom, with all unflag- 
ging, heartaching love to lift up and save all 
men. He is no respecter of persons; he 
willeth not the death of him that dieth, but 
would that all men would turn and live. 
God's Providence sweeps round the world 
and through all time. All available forces 
and agencies are marshaled and marched, 
sent into the field to help forward his re- 
deeming purpose. So the great world forces 
that seem so hard and hostile are yet handled 
by him. They are his messengers, his mis- 
sionaries. Even the wrath of men shall 
praise him, and the remainder of wrath he 
will restrain. All things shall work together 
for good for his children and for his cause. 
True, many statesmen handling heathen 
countries for profit, many nominal Chris- 
tians in mission-fields for trade, many trav- 
elers wishing to make books for the market, 
and many sea-going officers who barely 
reach open ports, are the natural enemies of 
2 9 



Missions and World Movements. 

missionaries and of their work. The lives 
of many of these men are rebuked, and their 
practices are interfered with ; therefore they 
are quick to criticise what they never inves- 
tigate. The East India Company stood in 
the way of the work for years. Government 
officials frequently are willing to find scape- 
goats, and therefore criticise and complain. 
But in spite of all these surface views, the 
facts remain that missionaries usually lead 
the way into these lands. They furnish 
much information for government adminis- 
trators and for scientists. The secretaries 
and interpreters of the government embas- 
sies to unopened heathen countries have 
nearly always been missionaries. When the 
ministers of the civilized governments were 
besieged in Peking, and the whole world 
stood aghast hourly expecting the horrible 
massacre to be consummated, it was a mis- 
sionary, an honored member of this body 
that conducted the defense, without which 
10 



Missions and World Movements. 

deliverance would have been impossible. 
When our American troops made their way 
into Peking under the wall through the bed 
of the river, as the Persians made their way 
into Bablyon and into the feast of Belshaz- 
zar, it was a missionary of our own missions 
who led the troops into the city. We feel 
that it is high time for this irresponsible and 
unjust criticism to stop. 

Pardon me that I have turned aside a 
moment to repel these gorillas. To repel 
gorillas, did I say? No, not to repel goril- 
las ; only to brush away these gnats. Let me 
address myself to the great forces that fill 
this field. 

Our theme, like a cube in geometry, has 
three dimensions — 'length, breadth, and 
thickness. Its factors are nations and races ; 
its fields are seas and continents; its sweep 
is the duration of mankind. It is ethno- 
logical, touching all the families of men. It 
is political, reaching all the world govern- 
ii 



Missions and World Movements. 

ments. It is ethical, handling the principles 
of the moral government of God. It has 
chiefly to do with the Mongol, the Slav, the 
Saxon, and the Latin and the African races. 
It involves paganism, heathenism and the 
Greek Church, Romanism and Protestant- 
ism. As a map of the world can show only 
the few very great cities, so we can only 
touch a very few of the principal world 
movements. The Latin races in the Eastern 
Hemisphere have a great past, and in the 
Western Hemisphere they promise a great 
future. But we must pass these important 
fields with the prayer and hope that our 
missionary work may rejuvenate the one 
and emancipate the other. The African race 
is a far more remote dominion ; this also we 
must pass. Let us fix our thought rather 
upon the uncounted baptized and unbaptized 
heathen, whose movements claim our atten- 
tion. 



12 



Missions and World Movements. 

The Pacific the Storm-center op this 
Twentieth Century. 

The Pacific is the storm-center of the 
world. Low political barometers are trav- 
ersing its vast surface. Danger-signals are 
exhibited on nearly every coast. All the 
great Capitals are watching their ventures. 
The storm-center has left the Mediterran- 
ean and the British Channel and the North 
Atlantic, and now draws all eyes to the Yel- 
low Sea and the Pacific. De Tocqueville 
said : "The United States was a new factor 
in the world, the significance of which even 
the imagination could not grasp." Creasy, 
the English historian, in 1 851 predicted the 
forcible opening of Japan by the United 
States and vast changes in the Orient. 
Thomas H. Benton, arguing in the United 
States Senate for a Pacific Railroad, pointed 
to the setting sun and said, "There, there, 
gentlemen, is the East I" William H. Sew- 
13 



Missions and World Movements. 

ard, in Congress pleading in the interest of 
commerce for more accurate surveys of the 
North Pacific, gifted with the vision of the 
Seer, said: "The Pacific Ocean, its shores, 
its islands, and the vast regions beyond, will 
become the chief theater of events in the 
world's great hereafter." And again, this 
great statesman, in 1852, standing in the 
United States Senate Chamber by the side 
of the bier of Henry Clay, said : "Certainly, 
sir, the great lights of the Senate have set. 
We are rising to a more sublime stage of 
national progress, that of expanding wealth 
and rapid territorial aggrandizement. . . . 
Commerce has brought the ancient conti- 
nents near to us, and created necessities for 
new positions. . . . Perhaps connections or 
colonies there. . . . Even Prudence will 
soon be required to decide whether distant 
regions East or West shall come under our 
protection, or be left to aggrandize a rap- 
idly spreading and hostile domain of des- 
H 



Missions and World Movements. 

potism. Sir, who among us is equal to 
these mighty questions ? I fear there is no 
one." 

Since these inspired words were uttered 
more than fifty years have joined the silent 
and endless procession of the past. That 
statesman, like the one voiceless at his feet, 
has passed from the stage of action into the 
chiseled marble and molded bronze, and into 
the page of history. But these "mighty 
questions" are standing here, like mailed 
warriors, to dispute our march into the fu- 
ture. Whether we wish to enter the lists 
or not, we must, with the aid of the facts 
dropped at our feet by this half-century, 
make to these "mighty questions" answers 
with which we can humbly and fearlessly 
face God. 

The apocalyptic angel for this twentieth 

century, calling the nations to judgment, 

stands with one foot on the Pacific and the 

other on the continent of Asia. The Pa- 

15 



Missions and World Movements. 

cific washes five continents out of six. Asia 
contains the three greatest empires on earth 
— British, Russian, Chinese. It cradles 
three-fourths of mankind. It has the loftiest 
mountains and the most important rivers. 
It has the widest stretches of arable land, 
and the most productive soil. It had an 
empire extending from the Arctic Sea to the 
Indian Ocean, and from Germany to the 
Yellow Sea. "It built the most wonderful 
of all cities, Babylon, and the richest of all 
palaces, Persepolis, and the most beautiful 
of all tombs, the Taj Mahal." It has given 
Us music and the drama, gunpowder and the 
compass — guide on the earth, and the Bible 
— guide to heaven. It has generated the 
most philosophies, and is the birthplace of 
all the great religions. It has produced "the 
five greatest moral and religious teachers 
of the world — Moses, Buddha, Confucius, 
Jesus, and Mohammed ;" the wisest of kings 
and the bloodiest of conquerors. This is 
16 



Missions and World Movements. 

the land "where Abraham received the cove- 
nant, and Moses the law; where the first 
Adam sinned, and the second suffered." 
This is great Asia, whose population to-day 
is on the increase, and whose virility, with 
the aid of Russian infusions, equals its 
palmiest days; whose commerce is the 
magnet of every metropolis, and whose 
markets are the inspiration of every great 
nation and the necessity of all the dense 
populations. With new blood monopolizing 
her highways ; with rival leaders, the Saxon 
and the Slav, fighting with their backs to 
the North Sea and the Arctic Ocean, it is 
impossible for the imagination to measure 
its importance. Not a harbor open to the 
Pacific but feels the throbbing of its swell- 
ing pulse, and not a nation with a Pacific 
exposure that can safely sleep at the present 
low-tide mark. 



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Missions and World Movements. 

China the Problem whose Solution 
will Stamp the World's Civil- 
ization with Absolut- 
ism or Freedom. 

Turkey is the sick man in Europe, China 
is the sick man in Asia. I can not discuss 
her special mission work. I can only enter 
the Yellow Ward in the World's Hospital, 
feel the patient's pulse, look at her tongue, 
question the nurses, and sit down a few mo- 
ments with doctors and surgeons :r_ the 
ante-room. The patient seems to have creep- 
ing paralysis. It may be Locomotor Ataxia. 
It may be only the trick of the old serpent. 
The doctors are timid about diagnosing the 
case. They all agree that whatever ails her 
body the malady has not reached her intel- 
lect. Her cunning has never been surpassed. 
The Russian surgeon has brought his chest 
of instruments, yet he seems to hesitate to 

venture an opinion. Once when the Roman 
18 



Missions and World Movements. 

Conclave was walled in to elect a new pope, 
and no one of the Catholic monarchs was 
certain of electing his candiate, in order to 
gain time they elected an aged cardinal who 
was too sick and feeble to stand alone. As 
soon as the ballot was announced the sick 
man arose, dropped his crutches, and 
straightened up in vigorous manhood, say- 
ing, "Now, gentlemen, you have a ruler." 
A long and powerful reign verified his state- 
ment. So it is difficult to treat this sick man 
of Asia, who has the longevity of the for- 
ests, the rough endurance of the rhinoceros, 
the stately dignity of the lion, the cunning 
of the fox, and the wisdom of the serpent. 

The Bulk o£ China 
Is too vast to be handled easily in our minds. 
As it was lying on the map when some of us 
were in school, it stretched through sixty 
degrees of longitude and spread over forty 
'degrees of latitude. It measured four and 
19 



Missions and World Movements. 

a half million square miles. But in the con- 
vulsions of recent years it has shaken off 
Tibet, Ili, Kashgaria, Mongolia, and Korea, 
and now Manchuria is also being given to 
the great Polar Bear. There remains one 
million five hundred thousand square miles 
of the best acreage, one-third the empire in 
area, with eleven-twefths in population. It 
is over 350,000,000 strong. It is not diffi- 
cult to accept the recent statement of J. W. 
Foster, the great authority on American di- 
plomacy, when he says: "It is scarcely an 
exaggeration in presence of its history and 
attainments to assert that no nation or race 
of ancient or modern times has stronger 
claim than the Chinese to be called a great 
people." They were an ancient people, with 
city and town organizations, with commerce 
and trade, with arts and sciences, with his- 
tories and heroes, three thousand years be- 
fore there was an Anglo-Saxon. They had 

printing many centuries before Faust played 
20 



Missions and World Movements. 

with his blocks ; and gunpowder long before 
the last great Mohammed shot down the 
gates and walls of Constantinople. Their 
compass directed their open sea voyages be- 
yond the sight of mountain or beacon long 
before Columbus picked up bits of strange 
wood on the shores of Italy. They dug salt- 
wells five thousand feet deep centuries be- 
fore Solomon was born, and they had civil 
service examinations for office ages before 
Abraham received the blessing from Mel- 
chizedec. Surely they are a great people. 
When I stepped upon their shores I felt 
that I was in another world. The ages 
crumbled beneath my feet, and I instinct- 
ively looked about me for the patriarchs and 
for the leaders of the primitive races. Phys- 
ically everything was turned around. Men 
I met turned out to the left ; men I greeted 
shook their own hands instead of mine. 
Scaffoldings were built first, then the houses 
were built inside of them. The mechanic 

21 



Missions and World Movements. 

turned his auger and gimlet and screws to 
the left to make them enter. The carpenter 
pulled his plane and his saw toward him, 
and pushed his drawing-knife from him. 
Strangers moving into a new neighborhood 
called on the people with whom they wanted 
social relations. Soon one learns that these 
externals are only indices of deeper differ- 
ences. The very modes of thought seem 
reversed. Their architecture and art and 
very laws of language are peculiar. Busi- 
ness methods, politics, literature, amuse- 
ments, and worship are all reversed. While 
the races of the Orient often differ widely 
from each other in personal appearance, in 
costume and speech, yet one feels a common 
spirit among them all. Touch Asia any- 
where, and you have the same impressions. 
It is like touching a tiger, soft and pleasant ; 
yet you are conscious that there are teeth 
and claws concealed near by. There is the 
same politeness and dignity in manner, the 

22 



Missions and World Movements. 

same indifference to truth, and attention to 
minute social laws. It is always easier for 
them to lie than to offend. ^Esthetics anni- 
hilates Ethics. They respect successful 
falsehood, and judges who are flagrantly 
corrupt. They placidly accept any govern- 
ment with power. They admire a governor 
who rides over them and beheads them. 
Liberty would be scoffed by them. They 
think that there is no use of having pov/er 
unless you use it. They do not believe in 
power that they can not see. Honesty is a 
myth, and a man who does not improve his 
opportunities is an imbecile. They are ob- 
livious of the value of time, and hate haste 
as much as if they had, like Methuselah, 
eight or nine centuries to kill. There is a 
gulf between the Orientals and Occidentals 
as wide as the gulf fixed between Dives and 
Lazarus, yet, as in that case, there are hu- 
mans on both sides. These are some of the 
characteristics of the Asiatics, from the Arc- 
23 



Missions and Wored Movements. 

tic Ocean to the Indian Ocean, and from the 
Black Sea to the Yellow Sea. 

These characteristics, bad as they are 
throughout Asia, 

Have Their Worst Development in 
China. 

Here their evil types are confluent and ma- 
lignant. The Chinaman has no public spirit. 
The officers are paid to administer the gov- 
ernment; so let them do it. The officers, 
almost without exception, are unmitigated 
liars and thieves, and the mass of the people 
match them in perfidy. There is not the 
slightest shame about lying. But it is a dis- 
grace not to put on the best face. Treachery 
is a virtue. Li Hung Chang gave safe con- 
duct and assurances to the seven leading 
captive generals of the Tai Ping Rebellion 
to dine with him on his boat, and the next 
morning their heads were knocking about 

fo the bay. Sir Robert Hart was so out- 
24 



Missions and World Movements. 

raged by this bloody perfidy that it is said 
he hunted all day, revolver in hand, for 
Prince Li, determined to kill him at sight. 
There is no limit to their mendacity. The 
higher the official, the more monumental the 
treachery. In 1793, Lord Macartney was 
the first English Plenipotentiary to be ad- 
mitted to an audience with the Emperor. 
He refused to kowtow, i. e., pound his head 
on the ground, for his king knew no su- 
perior. The boat that carried him up the 
Peiho toward Peking bore a flag saying, 
"Ambassador bearing tribute from the 
Country of England." The high officials 
took advantage of his ignorance of Chinese 
to proclaim this falsehood. It would take a 
supernatural chemistry to distill one drop 
of honorable integrity out of a nation like 
that. It is not strange that such a people 
left to themselves are incapable of gratitude. 
The two men who have served China most 
faithfully for more than half a century in 
a 2 5 



Missions and World Movements. 

most arduous and distinguished duties, are 
Sir Robert Hart, head of the Customs serv- 
ice, whose integrity and honesty and lofty 
character have never been questioned, and 
Dr. Martin, head of the Chinese College for 
training men for the diplomatic service of 
China. 

The greatness of these men is only sur- 
passed by the greatness and variety of their 
public services. There are no men in all 
Asia who deserve more from China than 
they do. There ought not to be a man in 
the empire who would not gladly protect 
these two men at all hazards. Yet when 
the outbreak against the foreigners culmi- 
nated in Peking, no man would lift a hand 
to help them, and they barely escaped with 
their lives into the protection of the British 
barricades. 

The empire is honeycombed with secret 
societies. The slyness and mystery of these 
organizations are adapted to the superstition 
26 



Missions and Wori^d Movements. 

and suspicion of the Chinese character. 
These societies afford runways from the 
officials and from real and imaginary ene- 
mies. Their thieves have a king, who sells 
immunity from their ravages. Their beg- 
gers also have a king, who fixes the price 
of deliverance from their importunities and 
offensiveness. It is an unclassified social 
condition, where a beggar travels his cir- 
cuit on horseback. Famine relief money 
sent to Canton was used to pay damages 
awarded on account of assaults made upon 
the foreign concession. When the emperor 
orders that taxes be not collected in a cer- 
tain district on account of famine, the offi- 
cials often carefully delay posting the de- 
cree till after the taxes have been collected. 
Often when relief has been distributed the 
tax-gatherer follows close upon the heels 
of the charity agent and gathers up the 
contributions. Possibly these two agents 
have a co-partnership in the business, and 
27 



Missions and World Movements. 

both thrive. I saw up in the hills along 
the Yang-tse the castle of a great viceroy, 
who had cut off within three scores of ten 
thousand heads, and I saw some of the heads 
hung out over the street in iron baskets like 
ancient torchlights. This viceroy was pray- 
ing to his gods to spare him till he rounded 
up the full ten thousand. Yet he would 
quote from Mencius and other ancient clas- 
sics beautiful sentiments about "the sacred- 
ness of human life." Cooke in his "Life 
and State Papers of a Chinese Statesman," 
shows that this statesman "pockets the 
money given to him to repair an embank- 
ment, and thus inundates a province; and 
he deplores the land lost to the cultivation 
of the soil." Signing a treaty he said it 
was "only a deception for the moment," yet 
he exclaims "against the crime of perjury." 
The supreme irony known anywhere in the 
world, in the united judgment of the foreign 

ministers, is in the inscription over the en- 
28 



Missions and World Movements. 

trance to the Yamen, where treaties are ne- 
gotiated, which reads, "The greatest happi- 
ness is in doing good." Like the wrecker, 
who had picked up the body of a drowned 
man, when asked if he tried to resuscitate 
him, said, "Yes, sir; I picked his pockets." 
This bland, two-faced perjury runs through- 
out the empire from top to bottom. Very 
rare exceptions, one in a thousand millions, 
are found, hardly enough to prove the law. 
Li Hung Chang was sent to St. Peters- 
burg to protest against Russian encroach- 
ments upon Manchuria, and he was at that 
very time in the pay of the Russian Govern- 
ment as a director in the Russian Bank in 
Peking. China is the supreme hypocrite of 
all the races and of all the ages. It is a 
compound of Judas Iscariot and Ananias, 
perfected by the training and practices of 
four thousand years. It has not the con- 
science of Judas, enabling it to commit sui- 
cide. It barely has the smoldering rem- 
29 



Missions and World Movements. 

nants of the moral sense of Ananias, suffi- 
ficient to make it susceptible to moral pun- 
ishment. Its chief public virtue is fear of 
power. The only binding force in its cove- 
nants is in the mouth of a double-shotted 
cannon. 

This Moral Mummy is Embalmed and 
Wrapped in Superstitions 

Four thousand years old, and more than 
ten thousand layers deep. These super- 
stitions touch every act of life and every 
word and every secret thought. They are 
victims of luck, fortune-tellers, and necro- 
mancy. They live in a world packed to the 
very stars with powerful spirits, which must 
not be offended. All ranks and classes from 
the emperor down to the poorest cooley, are 
steeped and boiled and parboiled in super- 
stition. By these superstitions the univer- 
sity men and the priests govern and rob and 
torment all classes. A priest in charge of a 
30 



Missions and World Movements. 

temple in Canton pays many thousand dol- 
lars ($40,000) for the control of the temple. 
He robs the people by his monopolies to pay 
this fee and enrich himself. Poor people 
pay to him ten times as much for an incense 
stick as it costs elsewhere. Only sticks pur- 
chased in that temple can be burned there. 
Women pay enormous extortions for the 
privilege of sleeping on mats in the temple. 
This privilege is said to increase their 
chances for male progeny. 

All China is robbed and persecuted and 
tormented by these cruel superstitions. Be- 
hind the viceroy's Yamen in Tientsin — that 
was Li Hung Chang's Yamen, or Court — 
there was a temple to Ta Wang, the wind 
and water dragon. A boat conveying a pre- 
fect was nearly overturned by a sudden 
storm. Some boatman with his pole must 
have carelessly disturbed Ta Wang. Care- 
ful search was made, and a small snake 
was discovered near the railroad bridge, 
31 



Missions and World Movements. 

Profuse apologies and prostrations were 
made to it, and it was carefully carried with 
the greatest pomp and ceremony to the Ta 
Wang temple. China is the deepest pit of 
heathenism, where Satan brews his most 
powerful charms and his most deadly moral 
plagues. 

No human plummet can fathom this sea 
of corruption. Two hundred thousand na- 
tives in Hong Kong, many of them born 
there or living there fifty years in close con- 
tact with intelligent foreigners, glad to have 
the protection of the British flag and the 
high wages of a British city, where silver 
is as abundant as brass on the main land, 
and where no mandarin can extort half or 
any part of their wages; glad to be taught 
English without cost, so as to earn the high 
wages of European clerks and have the free 
service of English physicians ; glad to be 
under incorruptible magistrates and just 
policemen; glad to live in a model foreign 
32 



Missions and World Movements. 

city, where they can live as they please and 
follow their own customs, and worship their 
own gods, with everything to help them, 
and nothing to disturb them, — in spite of all 
this they are in all ranks with very few ex- 
ceptions, too few to count, as deeply dyed 
with superstitions as any who never even 
saw a civilized man. They are bland and 
smiling and silent, while nothing unusual 
jars the public mind. But when the plague 
came all their old superstitions came to the 
surface. They cursed and hated the for- 
eigners, and hid their sick from the doctors, 
and refused to go to the hospitals, and as- 
saulted both doctors and nurses, and threat- 
ened to burn the city and poison the wells. 
They believed every old superstition, and 
trusted their incantations and vile, filthy 
remedies. The influences of the clean and 
helpful civilization in which they had lived 
for half a century, but which did not con- 
cern itself much about their religious en- 
33 



Missions and World Movements. 

lightenment, vanished in one hour. There 
remained only hatred for the foreigners and 
the undisputed reign of Satan. No human 
power can save this people. Only the al- 
mighty grace of God, that can create anew 
the elements and energies of a moral nature, 
can make them moral and trustworthy for 
the uses of civilization. 

The one virtue in the Chinese character 
that has survived these long centuries of op- 
pression and superstition that keeps society 
from utter dissolution, and the State from 
annihilation, is the 

Family Tie. 

It begins with the devotion of children, 
strengthens with every year of natural life, 
and extends to the worlds out of sight, in an 
absorbing worship of parents and ancestors. 
There is no limit to the thoroughness and 
cruelty with which penalty is inflicted upon 
a child that kills his father. In Foochow 
34 



Missions and World Movements. 

I saw the traces of this penalty upon a young 
man who had killed his father with a hoe 
as they worked in the field. The officers 
chained him to a post in the execution place, 
and compelled his mother to cut out the 
first piece from his breast. Then they hacked 
him slowly into small pieces till there was 
only a heap of refuse at the foot of the stake. 
Then they executed the mother for having 
such a son, and the neighbors living next on 
either side for having such a neighborhood. 
Next the officer, like a policeman, whose 
duty it was to keep order in that beat, was 
executed. The officer above him, like our 
sheriff, was banished. The Tawtai, or gov- 
ernor, of the district was removed from 
office. Then they burned down the house 
in which the man had lived, and dug up the 
ground under it to the depth of two feet 
and carted the dirt off and dumped it into 
the river. They intended to wipe out that 
wickedness so it could not spread. 
35 



Missions and World Movements. 

Every Emphasis is Placed upon the 
Family. 

It is the unit in the State. The entire fam- 
ily is responsible for the conduct of each 
member. There is a mortgage of ancient 
and constant custom, an unwritten law, that 
makes the family responsible for the debts 
of the father. There is only one way to dis- 
charge a debt in China, and that is to pay 
it. It follows the family like an avenging 
spirit, not to the third or fourth generation, 
but forever till it is paid. The family must 
take care of its own poor. One man thrives, 
the indolent and thriftless live on him. He 
must employ them even to the exclusion of 
competent service, and often even to the 
ruin of his business. This family feeling 
widens a little, reaching neighborhoods and 
clans, but fails to strengthen the empire. 
The family tie is the chief virtue planted 
in the Garden of Eden that has survived all 
36 



Missions and World Movements. 

the migrations, and all the changes in dy- 
nasty, and all the centuries. It absorbs all 
the natural vigor of patriotism and all the 
supernatural inspiration of religion. Its 
roots entwine the earth, and its branches em- 
brace the heavens. 

Another element of strength in the China- 
man is his 

Colonizing Power. 

He crosses all seas and burrows into all 
continents. He surpasses the Saxon in abil- 
ity to toil in all climates. He matches the 
Russian in enduring Arctic storms, and sur- 
passes the Negro in working in the tropics. 
He is the one cosmopolitan, at home every- 
where as if he owned the world. Silent, 
gentle, submissive, industrious, economical, 
temperate, all-enduring, he thrives every- 
where — on the mountains, in the deserts, on 
the plains, in the islands. As the serpent, 
with his one ability to crawl, competes in 
37 



[Missions and Wori,d Movements. 

various fields, without fins swims with the 
fish, without hands climbs with the mon- 
key, and without feet runs with the horse, 
so the Chinaman with his one ability of 
adaptation competes successfully with the 
sailor on the sea, and with the frontiersman 
in the wilderness, and with the miner under 
the earth, and with the exile in wanderings. 
He does not ask for a fair chance. He asks 
only for a chance, so does not try to crowd 
anybody. Once landed, he abides. The in- 
dividual changes, but the kind continues. 
A human microbe, he multiplies. Not being 
a politician, all governments that let him 
alone suit him. He never breeds nor joins 
revolutions abroad. Not being a specialist, 
all industries with a possible margin attract 
him. He never boycotts any trade. Not 
being ambitious, except for more cash, all 
social orders that pay for services are equally 
satisfactory to him. He is pleasing to 
the greatest variety of women. He marries 

38 



Missions and World Movements. 

through the widest range of races. Like a 
mongoose he can run through any passage- 
way. Though fond of a palace, he can live 
in a closet and make a home anywhere. As 
gravity draws all rivers along the lines of 
least resistance, so his instinct for gain 
draws him along lines where there is the 
least waste of energy. He is the supreme 
colonizer. 

All countries are his — Siberia, India, Bur- 
mah, Australia, all the Americas, including 
the Philippines. All the islands of the seas ; 
he has the largest colonies here and there 
on the earth, even larger than the English 
colony, Buenos Ayres. In the Malay Straits 
he far outnumbers the Malays. In Siam 
he is nearly three million strong, one-third 
the entire population of that kingdom. But 
for the fact that he could not vote in Amer- 
ica, and so left the politicians to oppose him 
in the interest of those who could vote, he 
might have been to-day ten millions strong 
39 



Missions and World Movements. 

under our flag. It took all the venom of 
local prejudices and all the power of the 
General Government to check this silent, 
creeping, ever-pressing tide. 

In his wide wanderings he is a factor 
wherever he lives. He owns and manages 
great steamship lines, banks, factories, 
mines, plantations, mercantile establish- 
ments, great corporations in the English col- 
ony of Hong Kong, in Japan, in Singapore, 
in India, in Burmah, in Siam. He is a 
constant menace to the laborer in every labor 
market of the world. 

The Chinaman is not a Soldier. 

You find over China statues of scholars 
and statesmen and philosophers and literary 
men, but not often of soldiers. He has no 
military spirit, yet he has courage when he 
is well drilled, commanded, and paid. There 
are rare instances of heroism. Some men 
have volunteered as substitutes to be exe- 
40 



Missions and World Movements. 

cuted. He believes in strategy, not arms. 
He fights behind walls, like a cornered rat ; 
but before an assault he runs like an ante- 
lope. This spirit has made it possible to live 
in the same world with him. When he shall 
find a good drill-master and an able com- 
mander, and prompt care when wounded, 
and certain pay for service, he will be a 
splendid soldier. Russia can furnish all 
these lacking requisites. England sent a 
drill sergeant up the Nile into the sands of 
Egypt t0 the water-carrying fellahs, and 
Europe and Asia were surprised to see these 
recruits fight like ancient Greeks. Any- 
thing the Egyptians can do, the Chinaman 
can do. What England has done for Egypt, 
Russia can do for China. 

The greatest modern Chinese statesman, 
Wensiang, often said to foreign diplomats : 
"You are all too anxious to wake us and 
start us on a new road, and you will do it ; 
but you will all regret it, for, once waking 
4 4i 



Missions and World Movements. 

and started, we shall go fast and far, farther 
than you think, and much faster than you 
want." 

The Problem with China is This, 
Which Way is She Going? 

In recent years she has lost two-thirds of 
her territory, though only one-twelfth of her 
population. Yet there remain fifteen hun- 
dred thousand square miles of land, an im- 
mense block of available land, and 350,000,- 
000 of people. She may change dynasties, 
she may come under the control of some for- 
eign Power; but she will not cease to be. 
She will not be wiped out. Like the king 
in a chess game she may be checkmated, 
but she can not be removed from the board. 
Some pawn or knight, some Japanese or 
Muscovite, will cover her exposure and con- 
tinue the game. Her very numbers is God's 
promise of perpetuity. The yellow race will 
remain the menace of the world. It lies on 
42 



Missions and World Movements. 

the shore of Asia, a huge club, only waiting 
to be picked up by some Hercules. China 
is the world's problem for the twentieth 
century. Who will seize this club? 

Russia this Coming Power. 

We are up against an inexorable propo- 
sition. As we peer into the mists that veil 
the future, coming events cast their shad- 
ows toward us. There is a huge figure ap- 
proaching. It has a fur cloak over its shoul- 
ders, and a club in its hands. It may be the 
coming Hercules. Looking more closely 
it is a Bear. The- Bear that walks like a 
man. After our experiences during the 
Civil War, when the Czar sent his fleet to 
New York and San Francisco to defend us 
against intervention, it is difficult for us to 
fear the Bear or refuse him anything. Yet 
we must recognize facts. It is a Bear stand- 
ing on the trail. His posture does not 
change his nature. If Russia appropriates 
43 



Missions and World Movements. 

and assimilates China, we are face to face 
with the most powerful empire ever known 
among men. The world problem is this, 
Shall Russia be allowed to absorb China? 
This problem is full of dragon's teeth, teeth 
enough to seed down the world with century- 
long strifes. 

Russia is Already Very Great. 

She has 125,000,000 people, and 8,670,- 
000 square miles of land. The mass of her 
people are stout and solid, inured to hard- 
ship, economical, able to live as cheaply as 
Chinamen. They are ignorant and super- 
stitious, zealous followers of the Czar, tak- 
ing his word as final and almost divine. 
One block of land, from the Polar Sea to 
Persia, and from the Baltic to Korea, with 
no intervening sections of hostile or even 
neutral territory, — infantry could march 
over these wide zones without touching for- 
eign soil. 

44 



Missions and World Movements. 

Russia is Rendered Incapable oe Subju- 
gation by Her Geography. 

She needs only to retreat into her climate 
to destroy all pursuers. Even the genius 
of Napoleon could not survive her neglect 
any farther north than Moscow. She can 
march against any foe at her own sweet will. 
If she wins she can absorb the conquered 
territory to pay the expenses. If she fails 
she has only to retreat, wait, recuperate, 
and try again. 

The State, as distinguished from the coun- 
try, means the Czar. He is the State. His 
wealth surpasses that of any other man's 
wealth. Money is more than ever before 
the sinews of war. The ancient David 
might slay Goliath and scatter the Philis- 
tines with a sling and a smooth pebble from 
a common brook, not worth more than a 
Chinese cash 1/18 of a cent; but the modern 
David who would defend his country or ex- 
45 



Missions and World Movements. 

tend her borders must have steel ships and 
twenty-four inch guns. It costs $800 or 
$1,000 now to hurl one pebble from some 
of our modern slings. Money is the sinews 
of war. It takes a key of gold to unlock 
the gate of empire. The Czar is very rich ; 
has money almost without limit, His un- 
mortgaged resources approach $1,000,000,- 
000 a year, and would maintain perpetually 
a war as great as the late English South 
African War. The debt of Russia is $3,- 
311,000,000. Great as it seems, it is less 
than the debt of England or of France. He 
has vast resources from mines and coal and 
timber lands. While all other nations, ex- 
cept some of the South American Republic 
wildernesses, are hunting for and planting 
and economizing their lumber supply, the 
Czar has over 300,000,000 acres of heavy 
timber. He has income from rents and rail- 
roads. He owns 25,000 miles of railroads, 

and some years is adding to these at the rate 
46 



Missions and World Movements. 

of 2,600 miles a year. He has vast income 
from the liquor trade, which he took into 
his own hands to control its quality and re- 
strict its sale, and save the peasants from 
utter destruction. According to latest re- 
ports his income from all sources exceeded 
all the expenses of the Government by $200,- 
000,000. Out of this he put $47,500,000 
into new warships, $21,575,000 into relief 
for the crop failure, and other millions he 
poured into increasing the army. In a time 
of financial depression he was not affected 
in the least. He pushed his great Siberian 
Railroad 7,600 miles long, his Trans-Cas- 
pian Railroad, his railroads in Central Asia, 
in Southern Caucasus, and his railroads 
down to the frontier of Austria and to the 
frontier of Germany, just as if he owned 
all the mines and mints in the world. 

This great Siberian Road, purely a polit- 
ical and military enterprise, is destined to 
change the map of Asia and mold the des- 
47 



Missions and World Movements. 

tiny of China. A great Russian statesman 
has said, "We shall conquer China by rail- 
roads." Now running along the border of 
China by the thousand miles this road makes 
it easy and inevitable to put Russian pres- 
sure on China at any point. The Czar has 
only to close a little these iron fingers on the 
brain or on the heart or on the throat of 
China, and his will will be supreme. Know- 
ing this, he has pushed the Siberian Road on 
to its objective point with all the wisdom 
of a capitalist and all the energy of a con- 
queror. 

He still has had a large surplus which he 
applies to the development of Russia's 
boundless resources. Mr. Ford says in an 
English engineering magazine:. "Mighty 
canals are being cut, rivers and harbors 
deepened, arid regions irrigated, forests 
cleared and waste lands reclaimed; cities, 
villages, and workshops are being built, and 
colonies are being planted in new localities 

4 8 



Missions and World Movements. 

where modern systems of drainage and agri- 
culture are being introduced." 

These improvements are of the highest 
character; depots, government buildings, 
opera-houses, public halls, cathedrals are of 
the most modern style, and most permanent 
structures. The advances into new regions 
and toward possible conquests have all the 
appearance of permanent occupation. 
These vast outlays are no spasmodic output. 
The treasury is never exhausted. The na- 
tional debt is all the time being regularly 
reduced fifteen or twenty million dollars a 
year. New loans are floated only to pay off 
old bonds and carry the debt at lower rates. 
Not a dollar of the recent loans has gone 
into the treasury or current expenses. Rus- 
sia has large deposits in English banks. In 
recent years (A. D. 1890) one of the London 
banks had to have the support of the Bank 
of England to help it over a close place. 
Russia's deposit there was so great that the 
49 



Missions and World Movements. 

Bank of England asked Russia "not to call 
for her deposit till a certain date, as it would 
precipitate a financial crisis of the utmost 
gravity." 

Add to all this the fact that the 

Vast Resources of the Empire are Only 
Being Discovered. 

Coal, iron, copper, and oil are produced by 
the million tons, and their resources 
are barely scratched. Life-supporting prod- 
ucts are created by the hundred million 
tons. Improved agriculture is pushed upon 
the farmers. Industries are planted in every 
direction. Public works open new sources 
of knowledge and support for large numbers 
of the peasantry. The empire covering one- 
eighth of the earth's surface, and about one- 
tenth of the world's population, is a vast 
workshop. Russia is a beehive. The spirit 
of the great Romanoff family, the greatest 
family that ever sat on a human throne, in- 
50 



Missions and World Movements. 

spires all ranks of the people and of the 
army. They believe implicitly in the Czar. 
Tell them that such or such is the wish or 
will of the Czar, and they are quick to do it. 
Ask a Russian anywhere what is the mis- 
sion of Russia, and he will say, "To save 
the world." Ask a Russian officer where 
Russia is going, and he will point to China. 
Their faces are set to the southeast. It is 
ingrained into the Russian conviction that 
they are destined to reach the warm sea. 
It is amazing to think of the vastness of the 
Czar's power. All the energies of that em- 
pire centralize in him. The strength and 
momentum of two continents are com- 
pressed into him. He is the world's fist. 

With such a Power rising in Europe and 
Asia, nothing is impossible to it. 

What Does the Czar Want? 

That is the vital question. He must be 
judged by his history and his environment. 
5i 



Missions and World Movements. 

His natural and national instinct has been 
forward to open winter harbors, to the warm 
sea. He has desired the warm sea with a 
greed many centuries old. This drift is a 
world movement. It depends neither upon 
individual men nor upon particular ages. 
It is not dependent upon any great military 
genius. It requires only an average ruler, 
open to the instincts of his people. 

Opposition may retard this movement, 
but it can not defeat it. It is a tide lifted 
by the stars. It is a gulf-stream sweeping 
onward by the century, unaffected by State 
funerals or the flight of time. It is silent, 
concentrated, perpetual. As the Muir gla- 
cier comes out of the Alaskan gorge from 
a number of concentrated, converged gorges, 
spurting and pushing each other forward 
till the advance along the main axis of move- 
ment is often visible to the careful observer, 
so this Russian political glacier comes out 
of all the converging convictions of the em- 
52 



Missions and World Movements. 

pire, pushes straight on by a resistless grind 
toward the warm sea, and it must succeed. 
It is a world grind, and only God can stop 
it. Russia will ultimately reach warm water, 
but she must not absorb China. 

Can China resist Russia? Let the drift 
of recent years answer. China has recently 
lost Siam, Burmah, Annam, Tibet, and 
Mongolia, Tong King, Formosa, Man- 
churia, and Korea. These are China's tracks, 
toes in toward Peking, away from the nar- 
rowing frontier. It is not thinkable that 
she should now arise and reverse her direc- 
tion and her history in a struggle against 
her overshadowing master. Russia's ad- 
vances are as marked as China's losses. 
Russia has transformed the map of Asia 
into a series of Russian plateaus, marking 
the mighty strides of Russia's progress. 
Look at them : The Urals, Western Siberia, 
Kastern Siberia, Baikalia, Kamschatka, the 
Amur, Manchuria, the Steppe, Khiva, Tur- 
53 



Missions and World Movements. 

kestan, the Merr Oasis, Bokhara, Samar- 
kand, — these are Russia's footprints, heels 
toward St. Petersburg, toes toward the ex- 
tending frontier, marking her strides over 
Asia. Meantime her naval base drifts south, 
tack by tack, Petropaulafsk, Nikolasefsk, 
Yladivostock, Port Arthur. 

iWith Her to Wiu, is to Achieve. 

She moves as if she had only to pick out 
of everything whatever she wants. Is it 
Siberia? She takes it. Is it Central Asia? 
She takes it. Is it Port Arthur ? She takes 
it. Is it Manchuria? She takes it. Is it 
Persia ? She runs her railroads to the Per- 
sian Gulf and takes the Persian commerce, 
knowing that where Persia's heart is there 
will she be also. Does she want Mongolia ? 
She has only to say the word. The iron net 
is fully spread. Does she want Tibet ? She 
already has her hand stretched under the 
limb to catch it when she wishes to jar the 
54 



Missions and World Movements. 

tree. Hei railroad runs 7,600 miles from 
the Baltic to the Yellow Sea, and a 
branch is already creeping up to the Great 
Wall almost within cannon shot of Peking. 
With her railroad stations skirting the Chi- 
nese border for 3,000 miles, and thickly set 
with forts, and with her navy nosing out to 
the Yellow Sea, she becomes the only friend 
of China whose advice must be taken. 

The northern half of China, all north 
of the Yellow River and possibly down to 
the Yang-tse, becomes her vassal. Her rail- 
roads will not only thread Manchuria, but 
all North China. The commerce of that 
great empire will become exclusively Rus- 
sian. Differential rates on her railroads will 
neutralize the "most favored nation" clause 
of the treaties. Without firing a single shot, 
or taking a single step worthy of interna- 
tional consideration, with only the pressure 
Russia knows so well how to exercise, China 
seems certain to be brought, and is being 
*55 



Missions and World Movements. 

brought, under the absolute control of Rus- 
sia. With a navy, now only second in rank 
and rapidly increasing, much larger than 
ours, a navy such as Russia can easily put 
upon the Yellow Sea and on the Pacific, and 
with vast armies within easy reach, there 
will be no Power able to dispute her ad- 
vance or countermand her orders. 

China Naturally Gravitates Toward 
Russia. 

Russia is largely Asiatic, all Asiatic ex- 
cept a little European light let in through 
St. Petersburg, the window which Peter the 
Great opened into Europe. Russia is 
Asiatic. Napoleon said, "Scratch a Russian, 
and you have a Tartar." She has the 
Asiatic ability to smile and lie and wait. 
She has no value on time. She hates haste. 
She has the soft, complacent, smiling, 
treacherous face of all Asiatics. She un- 
derstands and suits China. She yields and 
56 



Missions and World Movements. 

presses, and waits and holds on. She is only 
another arm of the same octopus. So China, 
repelled by and hating the Saxon straight- 
forward integrity and haste, naturally sinks 
back into the embrace of Russia. Her four 
hundred millions, drilled and paid and com- 
manded by Russian officers, can furnish 
armies without number, and inferior to 
none. 

Russia has supreme organizing and ab- 
sorbing power ; a hundred nations and tribes 
have been dissolved in this sea, and never 
one has ever been precipitated. The vast 
industrial possibilities of China, reached by 
steam and electricity over waterways and 
railways, projected and owned and managed 
by Russians, will make her as dangerous in 
the labor markets of the world as on the 
battlefields. Russia does not want a military 
conquest if she can avoid it. She will avoid 
all beyond the near presence of her armies 
and threats. She wants China for the sake 
5 57 



Missions and World Movements, 

of her incipient, and possibly boundless, 
commerce. She wants control of those mar- 
kets now ready for use, as soon as she can 
reach those thronging millions with proper 
communication and transportation. It is not 
Siberia for her own sake she wants, where 
she has to plant colonies and slowly create 
trade; she wants Siberia for what lies be- 
yond. It is China, where the population 
has been waiting by the thousand years for 
the development of commerce. 

Russia Wants this Empire to Use as a 
Weapon against India 

and against the rest of Asia, and against 
Europe. In Russia's hand China will be a 
deadly weapon, and make Russia the great- 
est empire, ancient or modern. 

Establish the Czar's authority in Peking, 

with a continuous frontier along India, from 

the Upper Oxus to the Yang-tse basin on 

much of three sides of that populous em- 

58 



Missions and World Movements. 

pire, with a home fleet on the Pacific su- 
perior to the English fleets projected into 
those waters, making the transport of Eng- 
lish armies impossible, with five hundred 
millions of people whose flesh and blood are 
cheap obeying his orders, able to drop 
armies into India without number, unex- 
posed on transports, then the absorption of 
India will be only a matter of willing. The 
Russian Empire, then extending from the 
Polar Sea to the Indian Ocean, and from 
Germany to the Yellow Sea, covering Asia 
and much of Europe, and controlling half 
the human race, will put Europe in greater 
peril than it ever was in the days of the 
Mongol Empire in the palmy days of Jen- 
ghiz Khan, or Timurlane, Russia is already 
running her railroads down to the border of 
Austria, waiting till the Slav and German 
elements of Austria shall assert themselves 
upon the near death of Franz Joseph, the 
present emperor. Then the Czar will be 
59 



Missions and World Movements. 

ready to bargain with Germany and take 
his Slavs in out of anarchy, while William 
III hovers his Germans. It looks as if the 
old Bonaparte had the vision of a prophet, 
when on St. Helena he said, "In a century 
Europe will be all Republican or Slav," and 
again he said, "If a Czar, brave, hardy, 
gifted with warlike qualities, mount the 
Russian throne, he will be able to conquer 
all Europe." 

This is not a dream. The Czar, as ruler 
of Asia, can do much toward transforming 
the Pacific Ocean into a Russian harbor or 
highway. In peace, by high duties and dif- 
ferential rates over her railroads, he can 
close all the vast markets of Asia against 
all non-Russian products, as he is doing 
to-day wherever his double-headed eagles 
float. He stops at no half-way measures. 
He seeks the accomplishment of his own will 
with the celerity of ambition, and with the 

merciless thoroughness of fanaticism. The 
60 



Missions and World Movements. 

Czar is accumulating and marshaling mighty 
forces, and is confident that he can absorb 
China, and later India and the rest of Asia. 
He will reach the warm Pacific. But he 
must not absorb China. The Powers must 
resist him, and set limits and bounds to his 
ambition and to his empire. 

The Lines are Being Drawn 

By an invisible and Almighty Hand. The 
Great Powers are silently wheeling into 
place. Sooner or later the contest will be 
joined. Let us catalogue the forces on each 
side. On one side is Russia, ambitious, 
seeking more territory, not for a crowded 
population, for she already has much room 
to spare, but for strategical positions for 
future political and military conquests. 
Rich beyond computation, compact in terri- 
tory, one immense block, buttressed on the 
north by the Arctic Ocean, cushioned on the 

south by soft peoples, stretching across two 
61 



Missions and World Movements. 

continents, with little east of her to resist, 
and everything to allure her, even on to the 
Pacific, and confronted on the west only 
by Germany. With 125,000,000 of devoted, 
warlike subjects, fanatically certain that 
Russia is ordained of God to conquer both 
Asia and Europe for the salvation of the 
world, with a greed for conquest fermented 
in the blood for many centuries, and with an 
experience of successful absorptions wide 
enough to turn the head of the Sphinx, with 
all this power concentrated in one unques- 
tioned will, can there be any doubt as to 
which way Russia will move? On the side 
of Russia will be found her ally, France, 
the Don Quixote of the nations, though 
within a few days France seems to be mak- 
ing friends with England. Turkey must 
yield to the old-time greed of Russia. So 
much of Austria as is of Slav origin will 
join the Slavs. The rest of Europe will not 
add much to these forces. Italy is only a 
62 



Missions and World Movements. 

name on the map. Spain is a relic. These 
baptized and unbaptized heathen will soon 
be able to rally half the human race to one 
standard. 

Against these vast hosts may possibly be 
gathered the Saxon and Protestant nations. 

Germany, 

That old birthplace and cradle of Protest- 
ism ; that camp in the heart of Europe ; that 
race of soldiers; that land of colleges and 
scholars, and statesmen, and fighters; that 
nation that sung its way from Berlin to 
Paris, trampling down all opposing armies 
as if they were only knocking off the heads 
of toadstools; that bulwark of Europe 
against Russia will give sympathy, and pos- 
sibly aid. Since the fall of Bismarck, who 
always courted Russia at the expense of 
England, it looks as if William III has come 
to his senses and realizes the danger of the 
presence of so great and ambitious a neigh- 
63 



Missions and World Movements. 

bor as Russia, as if the faith of his fathers 
was asserting itself in his convictions, as if 
the blood of his mother and grandmother, 
God's most elect lady, Victoria, was work- 
ing in his veins, and that he is turning the 
prow of his Ship of State toward the Eng- 
lish Channel. When Napoleon was in Ber- 
lin he visited the resting-place of Frederick 
the Great. He picked up Frederick's sword 
that was lying on his coffin, and carried it 
away with him. When Unser Fritz went 
into Paris with Moltke at his back, and met 
the French commissioners suing for peace, 
the first thing he said was, "We have come 
after Frederick's sword." That sword, 
dropped into the scales in this strife, may 
tell which way the beam of Fate will sink. 
Let us hope that Germany will be true to 
her history and her instincts. 

It is fairly safe to expect sympathy and 
comfort from 



6 4 



Missions and World Movements. 

Scandinavia. 
Those sons of the Vikings and of the old 
pirate chiefs, those sons of the heroes of the 
Thirty Years' War, who single-handed 
against all Catholic Europe for a whole gen- 
eration defended and saved Protestantism 
and Liberty ; these Scandinavians who stood 
off and so defeated Peter the Great, that 
after one of his defeats he had the Te Deum 
sung in the churches, saying: "The time 
has at last come when three Russians can 
stand against one Swede. The time will 
come when we can stand two against one ;" 
these Scandinavians who have a larger per 
cent of people able to read and write than 
any other nation anywhere, who, living by 
their fjords and mountain streams, sing 
the glad songs of liberty and are as free as 
any people have ever been in any land or 
age; these Scandinavians will be true to 
their history, to their faith, and to their God. 
They will be found on the right side. 
65 



Missions and World Movements. 

It may not be too much to rely on help 
from 

Hou<and, 

That pioneer of religious liberty. Holland 
was the advance guard of Freedom for two 
hundred years. She was the discoverer of 
nearly every great truth out of which re- 
publics are made. She discovered, polit- 
ically the individual man, freedom of con- 
science, free schools for boys and girls, free 
press, free libraries, free judges, secret bal- 
lot, written constitutional limitations for the 
ruler, full subpoenas for the witnesses of 
the accused, and counsel for his defense. 
Holland endured the tortures of the Duke 
of Alva without flinching, and resisted the 
combined forces of the Bourbon family 
through the long Eighty Years' War. She 
can never be wanting when she is needed. 



66 



Missions and World Movements. 

Japan, 

Suddenly rising into importance, long a na- 
tion of sailors and fighters, now in covenant 
with England, may be counted against her 
great and ancient enemy, Russia. Her fleets 
and her armies, her commerce and her in- 
dustries, her valor and her new life, her 
geographical position and her ambitions, 
make her a great factor in the problems of 
the immediate future. She so regards her- 
self and her mission. Her genius for peace- 
ful achievements is shown in her mounting 
so quickly to the second place in the com- 
merce with China, and in the rapidity with 
which she assumes control of her own new 
industries. Most of her railroads, started 
and handled by foreigners, are now exclu- 
sively Japanese; not one foreigner is re- 
tained with them. Her ancient war power 
has survived the exchange of the cross-bow 
for the steel cruiser. This is demonstrated 

67 



Missions and World Movements. 

by the ease with which she destroyed the 
naval power of China. It is not strange 
that she should now regard herself as one 
of the great Powers, almost the great Power. 
Count Okuma, ex-minister for foreign af- 
fairs, not long ago said in a set speech: 
"The European Powers are already showing 
symptoms of decay, and the next century 
will see their constitutions shattered and 
their empires in ruins. . . . Who is fit to 
be their proper successors if not ourselves. 
. . . The Japanese mind is in every way 
equal to the European mind. . . . We are 
become one of the chief Powers of the 
world, and no Power can engage in any 
movement without first consulting us. 
Japan can enter into competition with Eu- 
rope as the representative of the Oriental 
races." 
In the impending struggle 



68 



'Missions and World Movements. 

England 

Stands as the bulwark of Liberty, and the 
defender of Christianity, and the strength 
of Protestantism. Her blood, her history, 
her faith, her Divine commission, her com- 
merce, and her high leadership, and almost 
her existence compel her to meet this crisis 
before it becomes a destiny. England is 
born of all the great Northern races. Her 
island has been a fort for the control of the 
Continent. All the pirates from the high seas, 
and all the freebooters from the main land, 
all the ambitious chiefs and all the most 
fearless adventurers, patriots panting for 
freedom, and saints praying for ease of con- 
science, warriors and martyrs marching in the 
picket-line of the advance guard of human 
progress, generation after generation, age 
after age, for many centuries, have crowded 
into this island fortress, and have contended 
for a footing and a future. In the death- 
69 



Missions and World Movements. 

grapple with fagot and sword they have 
staggered from shore to shore, baptizing 
every blade of grass with the blood of their 
martyrs, and paving every square yard of 
their island with the bodies of their heroes. 
They have mingled their blood in their 
streams and in their veins, and out of all 
this strife and agony has come the most 
virile race known to history. 

[England To-day is a Bank and an Ex- 
change. 

She calculates in marble counting-rooms 
and lives in golden palaces. She does not 
produce so much as she causes others to 
produce and then divide. She stretches her 
arms over all seas and into all continents. 
She sends her sons into all the mines and 
forests and harvests of many lands, and 
they come back with much of the world's 
wealth. She lives and labors at arm's- 
length. To be anything she must keep 
70 



Missions and World Movements. 

open her markets and keep up her lines of 
transportation. The heart of her wealth 
beats inside her narrow shores, but she must 
keep her arteries and veins, that net the 
world, in safety and health. Let these clog, 
and heart- failure will end her career. 

Her Indian Empire fills many of her cof- 
fers and feeds many of her millions. With- 
out it she might still exist, but she would 
miss many of her luxuries and lose much of 
her prestige. There have been three great 
queens of the sea — Tyre, and Venice, and 
England. Tyre is only a tradition; Venice 
is a remnant; England, stripped of India, 
might be pushed from her place of power. 
She is forced by her commerce, and almost 
for her very existence, to stand at all hazards 
against the shadow of the returning Mongol 
Empire. She can not allow Russia to rule 
Asia. 

England's faith is her soul. This is the 
power that gave her her leadership and her 
7i 



Missions and World Movements. 

destiny. She stands for all that is dear in 
freedom and all that is sacred in religion. 
Her Westminster Abbey gives her the 
stately pageant of her history and the pride 
of her great families. But her Smithfield, 
where her martyrs, for the sake of the 
truth, defied the stake and the fagot, is 
the center of her power and of her glory. 
The ashes from that sacred spot have been 
carried by the waves and by the winds to 
all shores and over all lands, where they 
have sprung up in free institutions and pros- 
perous peace. Nearly all her great families 
know what Protestantism cost and what 
made Smithfield resistless. While the mem- 
ories of these historic sacrifices touch a 
chord in the hearts of freemen, and England 
stands for the open Bible, she can never in- 
nocently or safely hand over Asia to bap- 
tized and unbaptized heathenism. Wher- 
ever the power of Russia reaches, there mis- 
sion work in the past has been perilous, and 
72 



Missions and Wored Movements. 

almost impossible. But wherever the Union 
Jack is unfurled, there the Bible is wide 
open and religious teaching is protected and 
safe. If England surrenders Asia to Rus- 
sia she gives a new lease of life to heathen- 
ism, and postpones the triumph of the Cross 
for from two to ten centuries. She sur- 
renders her scepter, and passes into obscur- 
ity uncrowned and unhonored. We still 
hope that England can never retreat. Like 
the Old Guard at Waterloo, England can die, 
but she can never surrender. She fought 
France for three hundred years with vary- 
ing fortunes but they gave her Marlbor- 
ough and Nelson and Wellington, and cre- 
ated her empire. Surely she can afford to 
fight Russia twice that time, if necessary, 
to maintain her supremacy and perpetuate 
her empire. 

There is Another Factor in this 
Problem. 

This argument, like John's locusts and 
6 73 



Missions and World Movements. 

scorpions in the Book of Revelation, has its 
sting in its tail. That other factor is the 

United States, 

Our ambitious, aggressive, confident, power- 
ful, dear sweet selves. Nearly every inter- 
est we have is involved in the solution of 
this Chinese question. We are drifting in 
this political gulf-stream. We are an 
Asiatic Power. Russia ruling Asia may 
transform the Pacific into a Russian harbor, 
or highway, a roadstead across which Saxon 
and Slav will struggle. In peace the Czar 
can close half the markets of the world 
against us, and we shall find the cheap labor 
of all the world competing in our markets. 
Our labor will be depressed as never before. 
A small per cent of our possible appliances 
can glut all the markets then left open to 
us. In war the Czar will be a colossal peril 
to every nation having a Pacific exposure. 
This is not a dream. It is a situation, al- 
74 



Missions and World Movements. 

ready within the field of vision. Napoleon 
saw it a century ago ; Lord Palmerston saw 
it half a century ago; we ought to be able 
to see it now. It does not menace us be- 
cause we have a Pacific Archipelago in Far 
Eastern waters. It menaces us because we 
have a Pacific frontage. "When we bought 
the Northwest Territories from Napoleon, 
and shoved the prows of our commerce 
into the Pacific, we gave hostages to Asia. 
With our inheritance comes our new peril. 
As long ago as the time of Mr. Lincoln's 
Administration his voice was strong enough 
to revolutionize the policy of Japan. An 
ancient edict against Christianity ordered 
the suppression of the "evil sect." The 
revolutions in the sixties encouraged native 
Christians to confess their faith. The 
Mikado ordered their extirpation. Mr. 
Lincoln sent word to the Mikado that his 
edict was offensive to the United States; 
. . . that it conflicted with the Treaty of 
75 



Missions and World Movements. 

1858; that it conflicted with toleration 
in the civilized world; and that "the 

United States can not Acquiesce in or 
Submit to the Mikado's Proc- 
lamation.-" 

The minister was instructed to "proceed 
with firmness and without practicing injuri- 
ious hesitation, or accepting any abasing 
compromises." Japan accepted the doc- 
trines and stopped the persecution. We are 
an Asiatic Power. 

The diplomacy of President McKinley in 
Peking concerning the Boxer troubles was 
the determining element in the adjustment. 
The three points urged by McKinley were : 
First, that it was not a war, but a riot, and 
therefore retaining the Chinese minister he 
thus kept fifteen of the eighteen Provinces 
out of the strife. Second, that the integrity 
of China must be maintained, thus preserv- 
ing the "Open Door ;" and Third, that dam- 
76 



Missions and World Movements. 

ages should be settled by a lump sum, thus 
preventing the seizure of territory by any 
individual Power. The Powers came finally 
to these contentions. The United States sat 
at the head of the table in fixing the affairs 
of Asia. We are an Asiatic Power. 

We have more at stake than any other 
nation. The Isthmian Canal will bring all 
our "cities into close trade relations with 
Asia. The vast multitude of Asia must 
come our way, either to trade with us or 
with Europe. What a future rises before 
us! The great cities of the Atlantic Coast 
from Portland to New Orleans have all been 
built by the commerce from little Europe. 
What, then, shall we say of the cities to be 
built on our Pacific Coast? Ten times the 
people, soon to be Christian and civilized, 
with the wants of civilization, will soon 
change the face of the continent. To-day 
we face Europe. To-morrow we shall face 
Asia. To-day San Francisco's harbor is our 
77 



Missions and World Movements. 

back door. To-morrow the Golden Gate will 
be our front door, and Europe will be be- 
hind us. Much of the largest part of our 
wealth will soon be west of the Mississippi. 
Our great cities and forts will be on the 
Pacific. A thousand million people crowd- 
ing in will tramp the highways into pave- 
ments. By the side of their trails vast cities 
must spring up. Cheap power will soon lift 
and carry and distribute the waters of the 
great mountain regions till all those deserts 
shall blossom like gardens. The most desir- 
able climate, the richest and deepest soil, 
the accumulated nutrition of ages heaped 
upon those sage-brush plains, easily irri- 
gated there will be found a thousand million 
people crowding these plains like the old 
valley of the Nile. What a city San Fran- 
cisco must be ! With no port near her, with 
a coast-range preventing any other natural 
entrance for hundreds of miles, with those 
long granite arms reaching up and down 
78 



Missions and World Movements. 

the coast to gather into that most capacious 
harbor the countless ships freighted from 
populous Asia, — with all these helps and 
stimulants the world's greatest metropolis 
will be built by the Golden Gate. We have 
more interests exposed to the Pacific storms 
than any other nation. We ought not to sit 
idly by while our destiny, like the Savior's 
seamless garment, is being gambled for 
before our very eyes. 

Sooner or Later We Shau, Confront 
Russia. 

The strife of all time will be to decide 
whether the commerce of the Pacific, which 
will be the bulk of the world's commerce, 
which will mean the dominating power of 
the world, shall be Russian or American, 
whether the Pacific with its interests shall 
be Slav or Saxon, shall be for absolutism or 
liberty. 

Almost in spite of ourselves, certainly by 
79 



Missions and World Movements. 

no planning of our own, we are being put 
in shape for this struggle. Our decks are 
being cleared for action. 

Hawaii, 
The one only and supreme strategical point 
in all the wide Pacific for the defense of our 
coast, has come to us at the right time. It 
is the only point where a hostile coaling 
station would be dangerous to us. From 
Alaska to the Isthmus, from America to 
Japan, this is the only spot where coal and 
water could be obtained. Four times it has 
been held by foreign Powers. Once we re- 
jected it when offered to us. Some Power 
wiser than our statesmen wanted us to have 
it, so it floated back to us with its Pearl 
Harbor. Now we want it. Never again 
will it be tumbled about the public market. 
On the other side we have the 

Philippines, 

Stretched along the coast of Asia. They are 
80 



Missions and World Movements. 

the very doorkeepers of Asia. A hand 
reaching out from Manila can put a finger 
or thumb on the principal ports of China, 
Japan, Korea, Siam, and Annam. If the 
nails on those fingers are battleships they 
can easily throttle those thoroughfares of 
commerce. We did not want the Philip- 
pines ; but now nobody else can have them. 
When Dewey took Manila a great Chinaman 
said, " This is the salvation of China ; she 
will not be partitioned." 

Russia sold us eighteen thousand miles 
of North American coast line. We did not 
want it ; but now we mean to keep it. No 
double-headed eagle must ever again light 
on this continent. France sold us another 
stretch of Pacific Coast for fifteen million 
dollars, and now there is not enough money 
in France to buy it back, nor Frenchmen 
enough in the world to take it from us. We 
are being prepared for the coming strife. 

Our decks are being cleared. 
81 



Missions and World Movements. 

The struggle is between the Far East. and 
the Far West. It is a grapple of civiliza- 
tions. Let us hope that all Protestant na- 
tions and Japan — just protesting against 
nearly everything — will stand together, and 
present such a solid front that Russia, even 
though hoping to rule all Asia, may hesitate 
to disturb the peace, and be compelled to 
resort to her lifelong policy of delay and 
diplomacy and pressure, and thus make 
room for better agencies than the sword, 
and time for better principles to obtain the 
mastery. Sooner or later Russia will reach 
the warm sea; but she must not have all 
Asia. She must be checked and held where 
she is by the Powers till China is Christian- 
ized in principles and civilized in fact. The 
great Protestant nations may use diplomacy 
to gain time. The last forty years civilized 
Japan and prepared her to join England 
on the side of freedom in the combinations 

against Russia. Seventy-five years more 
82 



Missions and World Movements. 

may so transform China as to make her an 
ally instead of an enemy. Sir Robert Hart 
regards "China as a menace to the civilized 
world," and suggests only two remedies. 
First, the partition of the empire among the 
Powers, a course embarrassed by many diffi- 
culties. Second, the miraculous spread of 
Christianity, a not impossible but scarcely to 
be hoped for religious triumph, which would 
convert China into the friendliest of friendly 
Powers." We are confronting a crisis. 
Once in the rapids, the current is swift and 
the cataract is near and inevitable. When 
a falling man has slid from a high roof we 
say, "He is a dead man !" though he has not 
struck the pavement. The forces are liber- 
ated that will kill him. 

With Russia actually occupying Man- 
churia and fortifying Vladivostock and Port 
Arthur, with her Siberian railroad finished 
to warm water, the crisis is actually upon 
us. There is no time to waste. Our Isth- 
83 



Missions and World Movements. 

mian Canal should be pushed as Russia has 
pushed her railroads. Our navy, now third 
in rank, must be brought up speedily to the 
first rank, and we must hold ourselves ready 
to master and hold the Pacific. Saxon and 
Slav are running to get in. The Pacific is 
the fort. Whoever gets in masters the 
world and stamps the world. It must be 
free, or despotic for centuries. 

If the storm breaks upon the world too 
suddenly, and all the other Powers stand 
back and leave the contest to the English- 
speaking peoples, we even then can defend 
our rights, save the world from Russian 
absolutism, and meet the high obligation 
thrust upon us by a friendly Providence, 
provided that we understand that the strife 
is like the old tolke knife strife oi the 
Swedes, where the contestants are bound 
together by a rope around their waists, are 
armed with a stout knife, and fight to the 

finish a mortal strife, provided that we un- 
84 



Missions and World Movements. 

derstand its decisive character and have but 
one argument, and that is war to the bitter 
end ; that we have but one plan, and that is 
victory or death ; that we have but one pur- 
pose, and that the absolute control of the 
Pacific, cost what it may. With such con- 
victions and purpose we can help liberty to 
her last and final triumph, and secure civil 
and religious freedom for mankind forever. 
That wise and sleepless Providence has 
cared for us, even before our cradles were 
made, and furnished defenses for our use. 
About the great walled cities of China and 
Japan I have seen the old deep moats to be 
flooded for defense. So about the great 
groups of English-speaking peoples and 
possessions God has dug and flooded his 
deep and almost impassable moats. Look 
at them. The United States, Canada, Eng- 
land, South Africa, Australia, and New Zea- 
land, protected by God's moats. Some one 
who fixes the bounds and habitations of the 
85 



Missions and World Movements. 

nations inspired and ordered these colonies 
and States and empires. The channel and 
the tempest did most to destroy the Spanish 
Armada. So God has made ready his chan- 
nels, and can easily cut the leashes of storm 
and tempest about these centers of English- 
speaking peoples, these homes of liberty and 
Christianity. It is for us merely to use the 
defenses offered us. This Isthmian Canal, 
that last possible revolution in the geog- 
raphy of the world, must be put through. 
We must have a great navy that can offset 
any navy created by Russia, and so prac- 
tically neutralize the tens of millions of sol- 
diers possible to Asia. 

There Remains to Us Another Duty, 

The enlistment and marshaling of forces 

that surpass all other forces in the field, the 

spiritual forces of God's government and 

Providence. How can I enter this field? 

Who can venture into the war counsel of 
86 



Missions and World Movements. 

the Almighty? God's heart is fixed and 
his mind is set. He says: "O that there 
were such an heart in you that you would 
hear my voice! How can I give you up? 
The kingdoms of this world shall become 
the kingdom of our L,ord and of his Christ. 
Nevertheless I will be inquired of by the 
House of Israel to do these things." 

God Waits for the Prayer of Israel. 

We must work and use the human agencies, 
but the victory comes only from God. 
When we have come to our limit God comes 
in. Our extremity is God's opportunity. 
Paul may plant and Apollos water, but it 
is God that giveth the increase. 

It is borne in upon me to say to these 
workers, that the 

Time for Prayer, Agonizing Prayer, 
Sacrificing Prayer, Has Come. 

We are only playing with this matter of 
87 



Missions and World Movements. 

saving the world. We, as a Church, have 
not yet straightened our traces on this load. 
During the Civil War we gave in money, 
and in our credit as a Nation, an average 
of one hundred dollars a year for each man, 
woman, and child to re-establish this Gov- 
ernment and give freedom to three million 
slaves, whose bodies only were in bondage. 
Surely virtue, economy, industry, temper- 
ance, honesty must count for something. 
We must be up to the average. We gave 
our pro rata share. Surely if this mission 
work were upon us with the same burden, 
and pressure and grip, we could give as 
much in cash and credit for the re-establish- 
ment of the blessed government of our God 
over a lost and revolted world, and to give 
freedom to a thousand million helpless ones 
in the direst bondage of both body and soul. 
That is not impossible. That means that 
our Methodist Episcopal Church alone, in- 
stead of struggling to raise one million and 
88 



Missions and World Movements. 

a half in a year, could raise more than three 
hundred million dollars a year. I know 
you stagger as I do at these figures ; but we 
have given this, and if we were near enough 
to the Son of God to hear the broken- 
hearted sobs and feel the anguish of Geth- 
semane, if we were near enough to the chis- 
eled rock of Calvary to hear that agonizing, 
heart-breaking cry that rent the veil of the 
temple, and rent the trembling rocks of that 
bloody summit, and rent the granite doors 
of death, and echoed through the universe 
as if the wrath of the Lamb were driving 
suns and stars from his presence, that one 
only cry in all the eternities breaking the in- 
finite heart of God, "My God, my God, why 
hast thou forsaken me!" if we could really 
hear that cry we could easily repeat and 
surpass these old gifts for the war. Even 
if we gave only one-third of it, what could 
not be done with one hundred million of 
consecrated and holy money? The world's 
7 89 



Missions and World Movements. 

salvation is reduced to a question of dollars 
and cents. We have the blood of the atone- 
ment, we have the resurrected Son of God. 
We have the gospel, we have the experi- 
ence of saving grace, we have the theology, 
we have hosts of scholarly believers. We 
have the material agencies, Bibles, presses, 
steamboats, railroads, translations, gram- 
mars, and the open doors of the world — all 
the appliances, ready and waiting. All we 
lack is the money. We have not scratched 
the surface of our possible giving. God, 
pity us ! Jesus pleads. He says : "I emptied 
myself of the glory I had with the Father 
before the worlds were made. I had all the 
wealth of all the Ophirs, and of all the Aus- 
tralias, and of all the Californias, and of all 
worlds, all the fullness of the Godhead bod- 
ily. Yet for your sakes, to save you, to 
save the world, I exchanged the scepter that 
swayed over all intelligences for the spikes 

of a felon's cross, exchanged the songs of 
90 



Missions and World Movements. 

the angels for the hooting of the mob, ex- 
changed the unspeakable glory of the eter- 
nal court for the gloom of a human sepul- 
cher; for your sake I became so poor that 
I had not where to lay my head. Now I 
call upon you to come after me to take up 
your cross and follow me, knowing that if 
any man have not my Spirit he is none of 
mine. Come up to the help of the Lord, 
to the help of the Lord, against the mighty." 
IWhat is* our answer ? 

Our giving is only sixty cents a year. 
This is no answer. O, thou sorrowing and 
dying Son of God, have mercy upon us. 
Pour thy Spirit upon us till we count it all 
joy to give and sacrifice for thee, till we un- 
derstand the fellowship of thy suffering. 

Our First Need is Prayer, 

Mighty prayer that our eyes may be opened, 

that our hearts may be opened, that our 

pockets may be opened. Our day is passing 

9i 



Missions and World Movements. 

swifter than a weaver's shuttle. It is borne 
in upon me that the Son of God is weeping 
over us as he wept over Jerusalem, saying, 
"How oft would I have gathered thy chil- 
dren together as a hen gathereth her chick- 
ens under her wings, and ye would not." 
May we awake and pray lest we hear the 
rest of the sentence! 'Behold, your house 
is left unto you desolate I" 

We are within reach of Asia. We can 
crowd our messengers into China and India. 
God can yet reach those millions. God can 
yet give us the liberality necessary to reach 
and save the seven hundred millions of 
China and India. These lands are still open. 
God will hear and answer prayer. My faith 
looks up to thee, thou Lamb of Calvary. 

There is Great Russia. 

We must pray mightily for Russia. We 
ought to enter Russia with a great mission- 
ary force. There she stands, blocking the 
92 



Missions and World Movements. 

door of the future. As I look at her she 
seems the greatest field, the most inviting 
field under the stars. One hundred and 
twenty-five millions of people, not an effete 
race, the virile and conquering race of all 
Asia ; most of them free from idolatry, with 
the open Bible in their hands, and observing 
the forms of Christian worship; most of 
them within the reach of Christian altars, 
lacking the spirit of the gospel, lacking the 
saving power of the gospel, lacking the per- 
sonal experience uf the new life received by 
faith only in Jesus Christ. Just now since 
we last met the Lord has touched the heart 
of the Czar, and the doors of Russia have 
swung back, the hinges set in bigotry for 
generations, clogged with the rust of cen- 
turies, have moved back, pushed by the hand 
of God. The Czar has ordered universal 
religious liberty throughout his wide empire. 
God can bring the spirit of the people up 
to the liberal edict of the Czar. This field^ 
93 



Missions and World Movements. 

with the open Bible and with open gates, 
is white and ready for the reapers. 

Russia Saved, Asia is Saved. 

There never was such demand for prayer, 
prayer, mighty prayer for Russia, that God 
will pour out his Spirit upon Russia and call 
to the minds of that people the Word which 
he has spoken to them. He can quicken this 
Word, now lying dormant in their hearts, 
and sweep over that empire in miraculous 
power. God can raise up some Wesley, who 
will call the dead Greek Church from its 
sepulcher, and make it stand on its feet. 
Our high duty is prayer, prayer, prevailing 
prayer for Russia; prayer that God will 
arouse the Powers to preserve the integrity 
of China ; prayer that God will put a bit in 
the teeth of Russia, saying, "Thus far may- 
est thou go, and no farther," till vital godli- 
ness shall burn in all Russian hearts ; prayer 
that God will show us tjiese fields and make 
94 



Missions and World Movements. 

us feel their greatness; prayer that God will 
inspire within us the spirit of consecrated, 
abundant giving up to the limit of our abil- 
ity; prayer that God may display resistless 
supernatural power in the miraculous spread 
of the gospel over China; prayer that the 
gospel may speedily reach and conquer 
every caste and family of India ; prayer that 
the Holy Ghost may fall upon all the cold 
altars and upon all the formal and nominal 
Christians of all Churches, quickening them 
into spiritual life; prayer, agonizing prayer 
that the command of the Son of God to go 
into all the world may so sink into every 
professing Christian's heart, that he can find 
no rest till he is willing to go or send. 

Our God is the living God. He hears and 
answers prayer. Daniel called upon him, 
and the mouths of the lions were closed. 
He can close the mouth of the Bear. 

Elijah, the Tishite, stood against AhaH, 
and said: "As the Lord God of Israel liv- 
95 



Missions and World Movements. 

eth, before whom I stand, there shall not be 
dew nor rain these years but according to 
my word." These were heroic words of 
faith. Such was his faith that the heavens 
were turned to brass and the earth to drift- 
ing dust. This same prophet went up to 
the top of Carmel and cast himself down 
upon the earth, and put his face between 
his knees, and called upon God for rain. 
Six times he sent his servant to look toward 
the sea; but the servant returned, saying, 
"There is nothing." The heavens were still 
as brass and the earth as powder. But the 
old prophet's faith failed not. He held on 
to God and sent his servant the seventh time. 
Then the servant returned and said, "Be- 
hold, there ariseth a little cloud out of the 
sea like a man's hand!" Thus Elijah's 
prayer closed and opened the windows of 
heaven. His prayer loosed the forces of 
famine and death, or bound them at his will. 
The God of Elijah still hears and answers 
96 



Missions and World Movements. 

prayer. We must go up into the mount of 
prayer. Already there is a little cloud over 
Asia like a man's hand. It is possible to 
make it a mighty flood. It shall be unto us 
according to our faith. 

This old record bristles with supernatural 
power from end to end. It is one long 
demonstration that God hears and answers 
the cry of his children. There is hardly a 
page that does not display supernatural an- 
swer to prayer clear enough to found and 
vindicate a supernatural Church. We have 
not forgotten the deliverance of the Hebrew 
children, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed- 
nego. They said : "O Nebuchadnezzar, we 
are not careful to answer thee in this matter. 
If it be so, if you do cast us into the burning 
fiery furnace, our God whom we serve is able 
to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, 
and he will deliver us out of thine hand, 
O king. But if not, even if he does not 
deliver us, we are worth more to burn than 
97 



Missions and Wori,d Movements. 

for any other purpose. Be it Known unto 
thee, O king, that we will not serve thy 
gods, nor worship the golden image which 
thou hast set up." The king was wroth. 
The furnace was heated seven times more 
than it was wont to be heated. "These men 
were bound in their coats, their hosen and 
their hats and their other garments, and 
were cast into the midst of the burning, 
fiery furnace. The strong men that cast 
these men into the furnace were killed by 
the flames. But these three men fell down 
bound into the midst of the burning, fiery 
furnace. Then Nebuchadnezzar was aston- 
ished. He said: "Did we not cast these 
three men bound into the midst of the fire ? 
. . . L,o, I see four men loose, walking in 
the midst of the fire, and they have no hurt, 
and the form of the Fourth is like the Son 
of God." The king called out, " Shadrach, 
Meshach, and Abednego, ye servants of the 
Most High God, come forth and come 
98 



Missions and World Movements. 

hither." And the princes, governors and 
captains and counselors, saw these men, 
upon whose bodies the fire had no power, 
nor was a hair of their head singed, neither 
were their coats changed, nor the smell of 
fire had passed on them. (Dan. iii, 16-27.) 
The king said, "There is no other god that 
can deliver after this sort." But our God 
can deliver after this sort. He can do it 
to-day as easily as in the days of these three 
Hebrew children. He is the same yester- 
day, to-day, and forever. If we will call 
upon him, and refuse to bow down to the 
gods of Fear and Doubt, and stand up 
straight for him, willing to take whatever 
comes, the form of the Fourth, like unto 
the Son of God, will walk with us through 
the kindling fires of this world's empires, 
and bring us out without our having our 
garments changed, without having a hair of 
our head singed, and without the smell of 
fire upon us. He hears and answers prayer. 

99 

L.ofC. 



Missions and World Movements. 

Peter was cast into prison and kept for 
the day of execution. But the little perse- 
cuted Church in the house of John Mark 
and his mother, Mary, called upon God, 
and God heard and said to one of his angels : 
"There is my servant Peter; thrice he de- 
nied me, but now he is in prison for me. 
And the little Church there is praying day 
and night, and asking me to deliver him. 
Go and bring him out of prison, and let 
him go to the Praying Society yonder in 
Mary's house.' Then the angel went down 
to the prison and went into the dungeon 
where Peter was chained. He needed no 
key, for He who gave to the iron its co- 
hesion had sent him, and the bolts recog- 
nized the authority of their Maker, and slid 
back before his messenger. He needed no 
torch, for his face illumined the dungeon 
as if a sun had risen in it. He smote Peter 
on the side, and Peter arose, and the chains, 

manacles, and shackles fell off, and the dun- 
ioo 



Missions and Wori,d Movements. 

geon door stood aside, and the great gates 
of the outer wall recognized God's angel 
and rolled back to let him pass. There is 
nothing difficult for God when his believing 
children need him and ask for his help. He 
did hear and answer the crying little society 
in Mary's house, and did miraculously de- 
liver Peter. So he will hear this Methodist 
Church if only we call upon him, and he will 
deliver his cause from peril. We are at 
the parting of the ways. We are in the 
breach. It is for us By our works and 
prayer to decide. 

Look at Moses yonder on the mountain 
pleading for Israel. There on the plains 
stretches the camp of Israel. In the midst 
of the camp is an altar and the golden calf. 
Israel is on her face worshiping the calf, 
and saying: "These be thy gods, O Israel, 
that took thee by the hand and led thee out 
of the house of bondage/ God's anger is 
stirred, and he says to Moses : "Go, get thee 
101 



Missions and Wori,d Movements. 

'down to thy people whom thou hast brought 
out of Egypt, for behold, they have cor- 
rupted themselves." Moses, poor little 
Moses, who the other day did not dare to 
speak even to poor little Pharaoh, now in 
this hour of destiny stands boldly before his 
angered God and asks, "Why is thine anger 
kindled against thy people whom thou 
broughtest out of the land of bondage ?" 
God said, "Let me alone that mine anger 
may wax hot against them." Moses clung to 
the very vesture of God, and cried, "Where 
are thy promises to Abraham, to Isaac, and 
to Jacob?" God said, as if to buy him off, 
"I will make of thee a great people." Moses 
held fast, crying, "What will the heathen 
say, that thou broughtest out thy people 
into the wilderness to slay them? If thy 
promises to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob 
fail, blot me out of thy Book, but spare 
Israel." The honor of God was touched, 
and he was held in the grip of heroic sacri- 

102 



Missions and World Movements. 

fice. He yielded, and Israel was spared. 
Brothers, what vast responsibilities rest 
upon us who have the promises of God! 
If we, as a Church, will rise to the heroism 
of our crisis, and by relieving prayer cry, 
"O God, have mercy upon us, take our sub- 
stance according to thy will, take ourselves 
for any service, and if need be take even 
our children, but save great Asia, and bring 
this world into the light and liberty of the 
gospel !" if only we will thus pray and give 
and believe, God will hear us as certainly as 
he heard Moses. This generation of believ- 
ers will see the salvation of this generation 
of sinners, and the kingdoms of this world 
will become the kingdom of our God and 
of his Christ. 



103 



FEB 8 1904 



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